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DR. MARK JOHNSON, MD, FACS

The only Board-Certified Prolotherapist in the Southeastern United States

A highly trained surgeon and fellow of the American College of Surgeons, who has devoted himself full time to the practice of Prolotherapy for over a decade.

In the field of Prolotherapy, Dr. Johnson is an Innovator, author, teacher, mentor, and leader, who is focused primarily on the care of individual patients.

The third physician in the country to begin using Platelet Rich Plasma for musculoskeletal treatment ten years ago. Based on his clinical results, he has been invited to lecture on the use of this treatment strategy in national physician meetings.

Prolotherapy Nashville has treated patients from over 45 States, and a number of foreign countries. We are among the most trusted sources of this treatment in the United States.

Prolotherapy Nashville

DR. MARK JOHNSON, MD, FACS

PROLOTHERAPY NASHVILLE

HOLLEY JOHNSON, RDH, MS

PROLOTHERAPY NASHVILLE

Prolotherapy & PRP Articles By

Dr. Mark Johnson

Prolotherapy & Connective Tissue Damage Syndrome

Why am I hurting, and no one seems to know what is wrong?

Mark L. Johnson, MD, FACS

Prolotherapy is certainly an important clinical tool to treat damaged connective tissue—ligaments, tendons, cartilage, meniscus, labrum, fascia, etc. But perhaps a greater contribution made by Prolotherapy is that it sheds light on an important medical mystery. That is, when someone has pain in a joint, or in the neck, or back, or when someone has symptoms going down an arm or leg, or various other distressing symptoms, what disease process is actually causing their symptoms? I see patients on a daily basis who have had the origin of their symptoms misdiagnosed. I hear patients on a daily basis give accounts of lengthy odysseys through the health care system, often involving multiple attempted treatments, including operations, who are not better, and perhaps worse, after all the medical attention they have received. Or I see patients with significant symptoms who have been told that “nothing” is wrong—because all their tests are “negative.” One can read the medical literature and see many purported mechanisms for back, neck, and joint pain. Then read the results of patient treatment based on these proposed mechanisms, and see failure rates that are remarkably high. One can also see in the literature a large group of patients who, at the outset, do not fit into any known “diagnostic category.” Practitioners cannot be exposed to diagnosing and treating patients with musculoskeletal pain for long before a question becomes glaringly obvious. “Are we missing something here—is there a disease process that is right under our noses every day that is poorly understood, or totally misunderstood, by the medical community at large?”

I believe that the answer is “Yes.” Thanks to observations gleaned from successfully treating thousands of painful joints with Prolotherapy, I think I have developed a fairly clear understanding of this disease process. Many of these observations have been made by others in the Prolotherapy community for decades. What has been lacking thus far is assembling these observations into a description of a disease process. That process can then be named and understood by the medical community, and the general community, in a way which explains the mystery of many misdiagnosed and undiagnosed body pains. To that end, here is an introduction to the Connective Tissue Damage Syndrome.

PROLOTHERAPY / PRP TREATMENT AS ANALTERNATIVE TO JOINT REPLACEMENT

Mark L. Johnson, MD, FACS

For the most recent year that statistics are available, the cost of hip and knee replacements in the US was 17 billion dollars. So severe joint pain and deterioration is a frequent personal occurrence, and a vast public health and medical economic problem. I want to highlight three issues here: 1.) A generally incorrect series of assumptions about how the damage develops in a joint that leads to joint replacement; 2.) Where symptoms in these joints are actually coming from, and how triggering healing (with Prolotherapy, PRP, and/or stem cells) in these particular structures can remedy the symptoms, and the underlying condition, perhaps better than the ‘standard’ treatment—partial or total joint replacement; and 3.), why even a strategy of ‘triggering healing’, which has been the sole domain of Prolotherapists until recently, but is now being pursued by Orthopedic surgeons who use Platelet Rich Plasma, as well as by various ‘stem cell’ centers, does not guarantee excellent results. The results obtained by triggering healing are highly variable (as cited research studies, and my own results will demonstrate), and the factors which make the largest difference in results will be highlighted.

Happy Prolotherapy & PRP Patients

WHY YOU WANT TO READ THIS WEBSITE VERY CAREFULLY

This website will explain to you how connective tissue causes pain. If you understand this phenomenon, which is not a part of the medical training of your family doctor or Orthopedic doctor… their training is based on attributing most body aches and pains to ‘inflammation’ (which has been disproven by medical research), and to things ‘seen on imaging studies’, like bulging discs and bony changes…you will be in a position to determine if this is the cause of YOUR pain. This problem, unhealed connective tissue damage, is what Prolotherapy cures. In my experience, this is THE missing diagnostic concept in ‘mainstream medicine’. This ‘missing concept’ explains why so many people have suffered needlessly for so long, and been subjected to therapies that only mask pain, while making the underlying condition, pain of connective origin, worsen. This is why so many Orthopedic operations do not successfully ‘fix’ the pains they were supposed to cure, why cortisone and anti-inflammatory medications are worse than simple ‘band-aids’, and why so many significantly painful conditions evade diagnosis. And, this is why Prolotherapy works so well to cure these very pains in people who are told that they ‘need’ a spinal fusion, arthroscopy, joint replacement, cortisone shots, epidural steroids, radio-frequency nerve ablations and Physical Therapy; and who have a nagging sports injury or who have ‘wear and tear’ or ‘accident’ damage in the neck, back, and other areas. If you have ANY of these conditions, you owe it to yourself to read this information very carefully.

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DISCLAIMER: The information on this website is intended for educational purposes only. It is not intended to represent medical advice for any patient. If I have not personally evaluated you, I can render no opinion, diagnosis, or treatment recommendation. Do not use any information on this site to substitute for the opinion or recommendation of a licensed healthcare professional who has had the opportunity to evaluate you and to make recommendations. As in every situations, the diagnosis and recommendations of any healthcare professional represents their professional opinion. Your job, as a patient, is to agree with, or to disagree with, their opinion based upon your own understanding. The ultimate decision about your course of treatment for any condition rests with you.